February 12, 2006

Big news from Italy today. Here’s what Albireo sent us, along with scans which we’re going over very carefully:

Today, on the Italian newspaper La Repubblica, there is an article about Book Aid International auction, with a complete picture of the Black family tree! You can recognize the half that we already know, but the other half is blurred! The article says that JK deliberately put it out of focus, making the tree not completely identifiable yet! :(The photo is very small indeed, however you can still notice some bits of new information, which I include right here:

One of Phineas’ siblings still remained unknown from the previous image… now we know him: his name is Sirius (his dates are unreadable…).

Charis Black and Caspar Crouch had 1 son and 2 daughters.

One of Phineas’ sons (whose name ends -nus) married Violetta Bulstrode and had 3 children: Dorea Black, a removed name and a blurred one. This last one had 3 sons too: one of them married Drusilla Rosier (I’m not certain about her name) and had Bellatrix, Andromeda (removed) and Narcissa. Finally we have the connection between the Malfoys and the main Black tree.

Narcissa was born in 1955, Draco in 1980.

The other “young branch”, on the left, is blurred too: we know from the books it consists of Regulus and Sirius (removed). According to the tree, their parents are both Black

Probably the most exciting detail of all is that Draco’s birthyear is given as 1980. That confirms (finally, from Jo’s own hand) that the timelines on the Lexicon are correct and that the stories take place between 1991 and 1998. A lot of editing will be necessary all over the site now. Please be patient as we analyze this new information. Thanks so much, Albireo!